


Moon Salutation

by lil_bonsai



Category: Free!
Genre: Gen, M/M, Photographer Sousuke, Rin loving the rain, art college au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-20
Updated: 2020-04-20
Packaged: 2021-03-02 02:27:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,461
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23757619
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lil_bonsai/pseuds/lil_bonsai
Summary: A little past midnight, Sousuke feels an artistic rush course through him, and there is no way he isn’t dragging his roommate into it.
Relationships: Matsuoka Rin/Yamazaki Sousuke
Comments: 2
Kudos: 28





	Moon Salutation

**Author's Note:**

> I really love me some AU stuff (´w`)

Rain drumming against the roof. Rain trailing down the window. Rain casting shadows on the floor as it barriered between the window and the moon. A night where both moonlight and raindrops danced together was as rare as a blue moon, and it created artistic tingles in Sousuke’s fingers. He wanted to go somewhere. He wanted to look at something, to feel and to immerse himself in something but he wasn’t sure of what. As an artist, the urge to create always laid latent in him and could be set off at any time, like a landmine. Having eyes for both the visually and spiritually aesthetic, Sousuke laid in a hypnagogic daze of beautiful hallucinations about the moon and the rain as he bridged the realm of wakefulness and sleep.

Abruptly, Sousuke sat up in his bed. His heart was pounding, pumping blood to every part of his body as his chest tightened in an exciting thrill. It was the artistic rush and unless he adhered to it, there was no way he would sleep tonight.

Although prepared for a non-existent response, Sousuke projected a loud whisper in his roommate’s direction.

“Rin..!”

Sousuke grew a bit surprised when Rin shifted slightly in his bed, hoping that perhaps the redhead would look back with a face of half-awoken tiredness, but instead Rin had just wrapped himself tighter into his duvet. Thus, Sousuke got straight out of bed, walked across the room and removed Rin’s cover.

At first, there was no reaction. But as soon as Rin felt the crippling midnight chill slither across his body, and had no duvet to reach for, he rolled over and met Sousuke’s energized eyes no more than two inches from his own.

Rin slapped Sousuke’s face away.

“Gimme my duveyy…” Rin mumbled still half-asleep and turned his back to his roommate.

“You’ll get it afterward, I promise, but you need to get the fuck up,” Sousuke commanded before dropping the duvet on the floor.

Now, Rin could absolutely sympathize with Sousuke and knew exactly what this commotion was all about. He too had a keen eye for the aesthetics and had himself woken Sousuke after midnight because of an inconvenient artistic rush. However, telling each other to always help the other out proved to be easier in theory.

“Hey, Rin,” Sousuke said again as he crouched by Rin’s bedside, “Help me out and I’ll treat you to yakitori tomorrow.” For a few seconds Rin lay motionless before he got up in a spasm of annoyance, like a middle-schooler being woken by his mother, dragging himself out of bed and trudging over to his closet to grab warmer clothes. However, before he could even grab a sweater, Sousuke stopped him, pushed him aside and found other clothes for him instead.

“Here.”

Rin eyed the clothes up and down with disdain. “Listen, if you’re gonna do a girl’s pajama party shoot then ask some real gir-” Sousuke held his palm up and shook his head slowly to interrupt him. He shoved the flannel pajama pants and excessively oversized hoodie to Rin’s chest and gestured him to get changed.

…

Rain drumming against the umbrella.

As an act of gratitude for helping him out, Sousuke made sure to tilt the umbrella more in Rin’s favor than his own. Although Rin looked a bit lost, it wasn’t so much that he was uncertain of what he had thrown himself into, but more that he had zero interest in being woken up past midnight to go outside in the rain.

“Your camera is going to get wet,” Rin commented as he tried not to sound as if he were coaxing Sousuke for them to go back. Sosuke didn’t reply with other than a slight chuckle, and an inquiry to Rin to pull down the sleeves of the hoodie. Rin kept his eyes on Sousuke for a while longer to see if he could drag more information out of him, but it came as no surprise that Sousuke was a somewhat secretive person. And therefore, Rin let it go and rolled the sleeves down till they reach way past the reach of his fingers. Besides, it wasn’t as if this was the most bizarre scenario Sousuke had dragged him into.

Rin’s pajama pants being wet up to his ankles was the cue that they had arrived at their location. Sousuke let Rin have a second to take in the surroundings; They were a minute from campus right behind the closest convenience store. In the parking lot there was always only one lamp post working out of all the others, and looking at it from his standpoint, the lamp itself aligned perfectly with the moon, the rest of the vacant parking lot seeming to serve as a fitting background.

“So? Is this some ‘I’m singing in the rain’-shit?” Rin asked irked and was about to take the umbrella from Sousuke’s hands, which proved unsuccessful. Sousuke crouched down, forcing Rin to follow his example if he wished to stay dry, got the camera out of his bag as the umbrella rest on his shoulder to keep it from getting wet.

“Go out in the rain, will you? Just to get used to it,” Sousuke muttered as he was preoccupied starting up his camera and setting up the tripod. Highly against the idea of walking out in the rain without an umbrella nor a jacket to keep him dry, Rin hesitatingly stepped out from underneath the umbrella’s shelter.

The first minute, Rin dragged his feet across the pavement that glowed with rain, wishing for nothing but the warmth of his own bed. But the next minute, when the majority of his body had been soaked, there was a certain freedom in not giving a care. When his body gave in to the cold and his ears immersed themselves in the drizzle, he found himself removing the hood that isolated him from the rainfall, closing his eyes and looking up. Like a moon salutation, the liberty of an empty parking lot being doused in a nightly monsoon, Rin walked upon the concrete feeling so light on his feet that, at some point, his shoes and socks had ended up somewhere his cares couldn’t reach. As he extended his arms to the sides, a puff of wind blew raindrops through his fingers like the sand of an hourglass. If not the perfect allegory, Rin was swimming through water. Rin had never been an active swimmer, yet he had always been drawn to flowing water; To swim in, to float, to be mindful. Perhaps that was what ran through his veins in this long-lived moment of absentmindedness; Water.

Through a thin layer of water Rin’s toes waded, the water washing over and between them. Whenever Rin turned his head, the drops from his locks created a luminescent spiral around him, like a halo resembling that of the moon. His drenched clothes felt lighter than feathers as he, for a lack of better word, waltzed with the weather and floated across the pavement. Somewhere deep into his dearest memories, he was running through the rain with his sister after their father’s passing, as a means of telling themselves that even the darkest of days had a freedom to them. Tonight, although a different scenario, it was a lingering thought.

Eventually, Rin softly bumped into Sousuke’s chest and was brought back to reality. He looked up the few centimeters that Sousuke towered over him and spotted a delightful smile.

“Welcome back to Earth,” Sousuke grinned as he removed his jacket and pulled it over Rin’s cold shoulders, “You seem like you had fun.” Immediately, Rin took a step back and pulled the jacket tighter around himself, averting his body. “Listen, I didn’t enjoy _shit_ ,” he spat, and started walking back.

..

Deep and quiet breaths came from the other side of the dorm room when Sousuke turned on his camera. Sitting in his own bed, back supported by the headboard, Sousuke clicked into the gallery of the camera, starting from the top of today’s shoot. Or, tonight’s shoot.

As he scrolled through the tenfold of pictures he had taken, he released a sigh of the utmost relief. Of all the things he had learned from his experience behind a camera, the most fruitful and precious one was the rule of photographing undetected. When he had asked Rin to get out in the rain, it wasn’t to let him “get used to it” so it would be easier to take photos afterward. On the contrary, it was to take the photos as Rin was experiencing the rain, free from every care in the world. And what did Sousuke get? A rare night in which raindrops, moonlight and a roommate in pajamas danced together.


End file.
